Chapter Four'The Walsh family breakdown'

The marriage between Margaret Mawd and Thomas Walsh had been earmarked for doom even before their daughter Joe had been born. After the birth of Joe, despite the three of them living in the same house, mother and child essentially lived separate lives to that of Thomas Walsh and little Joe never saw her father or even knew she had one. Her young age and a surfeit of attention from her mother still protected her from being aware of such an absence in her life or the degree of wretched unhappiness within her parent's marriage. After all manner of close contact had ceased between husband and wife, it was as though Thomas couldn't even be bothered to try and hide the fact from his wife that he was entertaining the company of other women in the bordering county of Tipperary whenever the fancy took him.

Thomas Walsh, being ever concerned about maintaining an image, remained a man who would never mess in his own back yard if he could avoid it. From the few things he cared about, his image and reputation as the Portlaw Headmaster still ranked high.

As regard the appointment of a new Deputy Head, the shifty Thomas had managed to engineer it so that the post was offered to Maeve Morgan; a blonde beauty from Galway who would have had little difficulty in turning the head of any man. Maeve had been teaching in Connemara for a few years now and sought advancement in the profession. Therefore, she decided to apply for the post of Deputy Head in Portlaw at the school where Thomas Walsh was Headmaster.

Unknown to Margaret Walsh, Thomas had dated and bedded Maeve's older sister, Priscilla, as a teenager in Connemara shortly before he had started courting his wife-to-be. Priscilla's younger sister, Maeve, had always suspected that Thomas fancied her also and consequently, when the vacant teaching post of Deputy Head was advertised in the Portlaw school after Paddy Groggy had left the area, Maeve sensed an ideal opportunity for advancement and seized upon it. Once her application for the post had proved successful, Maeve had a good enough idea which of her qualities had secured her the job and had been responsible for the unqualified backing of its newly appointed Head.

She and the Headmaster, Thomas Walsh seemed to have the same sexual chemistry attraction, which included a reckless tendency to take all manner of risk. Thomas had been wanting an affair for many months now and so his appointment of the lovely Maeve as his Deputy appeared to be the necessary inducement of bringing forward the eventual likelihood of him being involved in another liaison soon.

Within two months of Maeve taking up the post as Deputy Head in the Portlaw school, she was taking off her knickers for her immediate superior. Despite the difference in their years of age, each lover adequately satisfied the appetite and needs of the other. Within a short matter of time, their relationship had become so passionate that virtually all customary caution started to be thrown to the wind and they started 'doing it' on school premises.

The couple had initially started off seeing each other at meeting places over ten miles away from their Portlaw doorstep, but it was only a matter of time before they couldn’t resist kissing and cuddling on school premises at varying times of the day and at every available opportunity. On their first occasion of going all the way, they even made love in the boiler room during their lunch break! Apart from the very small room where the school stationery was kept, only the boiler room seemed to offer them a place to to stoke their daily passion in relative privacy. The pair would frequently meet there when it was known that the boiler man was engaged elsewhere; usually at lunch break when he went home for a meal and could be counted on not to return for an hour.

It was on the very day of Joe’s second birthday before the shit hit the fan and the whole of Portlaw learned of the unholy alliance that had been sexually forged between their school head and his attractive deputy when a teaching nun at the school caught the Headmaster fondling the breasts of Maeve Morgan in the boiler room.

While the relationship between little Joe's parents had been kept at a civilly cool level for some considerable time now, Margaret still hoped against hope that Thomas would soften in his attitude towards his daughter and at least recognise her second birthday by coming home for his evening meal for once and sharing her birthday cake.

It was 4pm when Thomas Walsh stormed in the house and totally ignoring his daughter and wife, he marched to his room, quickly packed a suit case and said to Margaret, ”That’s it! I’m away from this hell hole of a place.”

Somewhat confusingly, a stunned Margaret asked, “What’s brought this on? Why are you leaving so suddenly? Where are you going and what about me and little Joe?”

“I’ll be in touch when I get a place to settle and another job. I’ll be in touch!” he replied as he walked out the door without once looking back at his wife and his two year old daughter who was crying her eyes out because of the raised voices of her parents.

Thomas Walsh never did get back in touch with Margaret and she never heard from him again until the day she died, although she did see him on one occasion over the years ahead.

Two days went by after her husband Thomas had walked out on his wife and child before Margaret learned of the incident which had brought about his downfall. She wasn’t in the least surprised by his infidelity and as the next few months went by, she gradually heard the rumours that he’d been seeing more than one woman on the side for at least two or three years now.

Three months after Thomas Walsh had walked out on his family responsibilities, Margaret discovered that they would soon have to move home and find another place. Ownership of the property had been in the sole name of Thomas Walsh and her husband had already made arrangements through the services of a conveyance solicitor to sell the property and release the remaining equity in it back to him over her head. As there had been no papers drawn up indicating a legal separation between Margaret and Thomas, Margaret’s husband seemed able to do as he wished regarding the property’s disposal.

Margaret had always assumed that after receiving the handsome house deposit from her parents for their first property, that one quarter of their marital property's value remained in the form of house equity. What Margaret didn’t know however, was the true cost of her husband’s unfaithful ways. Over the first three years of their marriage, despite earning a good salary as a Headmaster, he was spending so much on the side for his extra-marital activities that he needed to take out a second mortgage on their cottage in Portlaw.

For a brief while, Margaret considered returning to Connemara and receiving some parental support in this time of need. She even considered leaving young Joe in the care of her parents, but quickly decided against this. During her period of unhappy marriage to Thomas, Margaret hadn’t indicated to either parent the precise nature of the unhappy relationship within their marriage.

Consequently, the last thing she wanted to do was to return home to her parents with her tail between her legs, carrying a two-year-old daughter in tow and representing herself to mum and dad as a complete failure as a wife, mother, daughter and unpublished author for whom they had given much encouragement and had held high hopes of success. So, Margaret decided that she would contact them again and explain her present circumstances more fully at a later time when she'd settled in England.

Despite her separation from her husband Thomas, Margaret knew that the only help that her parents would offer in her present circumstances would be anything that helped to achieve a marital reconciliation, not hinder one!

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Having made the decision to leave her house, it didn’t take too much of a leap for her to decide to leave Portlaw and Ireland altogether! While she remained in Portlaw, there was no telling what Thomas Walsh would next do. She knew that he was capable of doing anything and she wouldn't even have put it past him to seek to place Joe in his sole care and had herself declared an 'unfit mother', despite the fact that he'd never once had a word or kind deed for his daughter.

So believing that she'd never know any peace until she left Thomas Walsh way behind her and Joe, she knew that leaving Ireland was a must and not an option. Margaret was determined to start life afresh for herself and her daughter so she decided to embark across the Irish Sea. It was a warm day in the winter of early 1956 when Margaret and young Joe arrived in the Port of Liverpool, England.With less than £40 in her pocket remaining from the sale of her house furniture, she hadn’t the faintest idea of what she’d do or where she’d go and how she and the little one would survive, but of one thing she was sure, both she and Joe would survive; of that there wasn’t the slightest doubt in her mind.